Ragwort and other weeds!

11th June 2012 by Gillie McNicol

Gorgeous walk from the Half Moon round the back of the new school at Midhurst and along the Rother Walk.. all very green and lush. Shame the Himalayan Balsam is coming up everywhere the River at Stedham is completely covered in the little blighters.. They will grow to about 6 or 7 feet high and then you cant see the river. They seem to be spreading like wildfire… someone must have slooshed out their pond into the river dispersing the seeds and now they just keep spreading further along the river year by year.

Talking of weeds I hate…we are pretty much on top of the ragwort (spot the Ragwort in the Himalayan Balsam Pic!) in the field we rent for the horses. It was riddled with ragwort (and docks, nettles and bracken) when we first took it over about 6 years ago. It is nine and half acres in an L shape and we have a racetrack system around it so the horses have to keep moving to find food and to have a drink. They travel the same route every day.. always the shortest possible but the same, very obvious from the worn track close to the electric fence. Spent three and a half hours on my little Kubota tractor topping two thirds of it today, now suffering from “tractor back”, but had to get it done before the rain came! The field was ploughed up a couple of years before we took it over and it is pretty rutted so very bumpy and slow. if you get any speed up you get bounced out of the seat! ! The Kubota had its first new blades fitted last week and the difference was surprising.. for the past few years, I had been giving the docks , nettles, buttercups and other things the horses don’t eat a jolly good beating.. this time it actually cut them to the ground.. fantastic! I used Trog’s very posh noise-cancelling headphones which made it a little more bearable to trundle round and round and round for hours.